Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Modern handheld devices such as smart phones typically include lock-screen functionality designed to prevent accidental touch-screen interaction. In particular, every time the display of such a device is turned on, the device may present on the display a lock-screen interface that generally requires a user to take some specified, intentional action in order to get past the lock-screen interface and to thereby access other features of the device. By way of example, a representative lock-screen interface may require a user to swipe on the display in a particular manner, such as along a displayed slider object, and/or to enter a password or passcode. Once the user takes the required action, the device may then proceed to present another interface, such as a main desktop interface, a last-used application interface, or perhaps a further authorization interface.
In practice, a user of such a handheld device may turn on the display numerous times every day, to check the device for new e-mail, text messages, social network updates, weather updates, stock updates, or the like, and may thus repeatedly encounter the lock-screen interface. Further, each time the user finishes using the device, the user may then turn off the display, or the device may automatically turn off the display after a period of non-use, to help conserve battery power. In turn, every time the user again turns on the display, the user may again encounter the lock-screen interface. Thus, numerous times every day, a user may interact with the lock-screen interface to unlock the device.
Moreover, as a currently unrelated matter, with the widespread growth of digital photography, it has become common for users to accumulate massive libraries of digital images. Further, given the convenience of capturing and storing digital images, users often add such images to their libraries without taking the time or effort to categorize the images. As a result, when it becomes necessary to find images of interest, a user may be faced with the difficult and unenviable task of having to review their entire image library in search of the desired images.